I'm not seeing this as the anti-shops card people are looking for. Granted if you can land it turn 1, while on the play, it can really hamper Shops, but once shops unloads their hand and is playing from the top of the deck (especially if there is a Foundry Inspector in play), I see this hurting you more than them.

Are you really going to dedicate 4 slots to a card that hampers your ability to cast more than one spell?

I do like it in Eldrazi.

At the end of the day, I think this is simply a Sphere effect that isn't synergistic with workshop and well balanced. Very exciting card!

Super interesting design - god, it just feels god when you get the feeling R&D made something with eternal formats in mind. Eldrazi gets a boost from this and should be fun to brnig out of retirement. What else? Maybe some of those Blue Moon decks that were running Ancient Tomb (and even Thought-Knot in some cases)? And could this see play in an Eldrazi shops decks like the ones with TKS/Smasher that were popular for a while? Slow down opposing shops decks/blue stew decks, make your own shops at least useable for casting big Eldrazi?

Anyway... think its fair to say this set already looks like a massive home run in both game play and flavour. Looking forward to it!

This won't stop (Paradoxical) storm combo more than other current answers since the archetype already often ran end-of-turn Hurkyl's Recall maindeck. The bigger problem is that more opposing archetypes will have access to a maindeckable hoser.

In other words, in the context of the Storm matchup, this card is more a question of ubiquity than power. Paradoxical Outcome decks, paradoxically, may even win out slightly if these replace some amount of Null Rod slots.

This card would be much more effective against prison variants of Shops. It is a bit too situational against Ravager Shops given that decks propensity for playing out its hand on turn 1 or 2. This seems aimed for Modern where it hits Tron and Storm as a colorless hoser.

@stormanimagus Posts should, in theory, contain substantive content and not what is essentially flamebait. Care to explain what effect this will have against Ravager Shops, what decks can use it effectively, what cards they will cut to include it, and why you think it will reduce Ravager Shops win percentage from 59% to 50% and metagame share from ~30% to ~20%?

@protoaddct Workshop is a far more restricted Black Lotus in terms of what it can cast. Players fail to acknowledge the fact that Shops is playing with fully 1/6th of the possible colors that the game has to offer. This restriction, in my opinion, more than accounts for the mana boost. Your argument is a tired one that doesn't compare one entirely busted mana source with another correctly at all.

Tolarian academy is restricted. Closer parallel? This shuts it down, is it safe to come off the unrestricted list like shops is? It also only provides mana for a small fraction of the available card pool.